The survival of Syria

Reflecting on the future of the conflict in his country, poet Golan Haji
says “Syrians want Syria to survive”. It is time for Western governments to
look beyond their short-term interests in formulating a response to the Syrian
crisis,says Zoe Holman

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What
comes after the destruction of a country? A failed state? Warfare without end?
Consignment to the dustbin of diplomatic history? While many Western
governments have tracked the progress of the Syrian conflict along the conveyor
belt of strife – from revolution to civil war to sectarian disintegration – it
seems few have been willing to envision anything beyond the final point of
demise.

Speaking at a public event in London last month, the exiled Syrian poet Golan
Haji noted of his country that “Syria has been in the stream of history for two
years. But it is now at the point where the stream ends.” His observation came
the same week that UN-Arab League peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, issued the most
dire descriptors of the conflict to have been uttered on the international
stage thus far. According to Brahimi, Syria was falling apart “bit by bit” in a
gradual descent into “hell”. His statement followed the discovery of more than
70 bodies in a river outside of Aleppo a few days earlier, evidence of yet
another in a series of unfathomably vicious massacres.

“Unprecedented levels of horror have been reached,” he told a closed-door
meeting of the UN Security Council. “The tragedy does not have an end."

It is doubtless that what began in March 2011 as a predominantly peaceful
uprising has escalated into a state of brutal chaos. Conservative estimates by
the UN suggest that at least 60,000
people have been killed over the course of its suppression, while one million
are forecast to have fled the country by this June, in addition to the current 2.5 million
internally displaced persons. In a grim fulfilment of President al-Assad's
“bandits and armed gangs” propagandising, Syria is now beset by rival armed
militias and everyday acts of looting and thuggery. Opposition groups and ngos
have decried the lack of initiative from the international community in any of
the realms of politics, military assistance or aid, despite ongoing campaigns
from the UNHCR which says it is facing one of its most complex and dangerous
humanitarian disasters. Circumstances are now considered so emergent that the
opposition National Coalition was compelled in recent days to renege on its
former stance and accept
dialogue with the regime.

At the outset of the erstwhile 'Arab spring' in 2011, British foreign minister,
William Hague described the events in the region as the most
influential of the 21st century. The uprisings were deemed “epoch-making”;
more consequential still than either 9/11 or the global financial crisis in
shaping international relations in coming decades. It is with the extreme
weight of these political transitions in mind that Britain, like other foreign
governments, appears to have formulated its response to turmoil in the regional
nexus Syria. Unlike Libya or Bahrain, the complex of strategic interests at
stake, combined with the scale of atrocity has enabled neither quixotic acts of
purported 'humanitarian intervention' nor the diplomatic turning of a
blind-eye. Rather, Western governments have played their cards close to their
chests, committing only to covert arms dealing and hedging strategic bets in a
calculating game of wait-and-see.

Starkly offset by Britain's alacritous seizure of arms in Mali, the
double-standards of this Western lack of appetite for involvement in Syria has
not been lost on those from the region.

“Every Syrian is extremely upset and frustrated about lack of support from the
international community”, says Radwan Ziadeh, a Washington-based exile who has
been at the forefront of political negotiations on the part of the Syrian
opposition on the ground. “Never has a country seen such a disaster, with a
regime targeting civilians in full view and the West just sitting by watching,
like a spectator.”

Not only has Western inertia failed to halt the brutality, many see
international lethargy as a contributing agent in propelling Syria to its
current state of protracted chaos – one which may in the short-term suit the
designs of key foreign onlookers, like Israel and its Western backers.

“Europe and America have used all sorts of excuses for not getting
involved in Syria, for example, the lack of a united opposition,” says Ziadeh.
“But really, the West has no interest in the Syrian uprising.”

“More importantly, leaving Syria very weak will service the interests of some
neighbouring countries. The regime is destroying its army and draining its
supply of fighter jets, and the country will need at least 20 to 25 years to
rebuild. Having such a weakened Syria is preferable for Western strategy in the
region.”

In this ever-bleaker purview, slow-coming humanitarian aid from the
international community – Britain this January became the second largest
humanitarian donor to Syria – can only reflect a band-aid solution. As Ziadeh notes, “aid is good, but in the end, it is still keeping Assad in
office to kill more Syrians. You are only dealing with the consequences, if you
take action against the actual source of instability then the flow of refugees
will be stalled.”

However tempting it may be for supporters of the Syrian uprising, blame for the
intractability of the conflict cannot be laid squarely at the feet of reticent
foreign governments. For the Assad regime has been as recalcitrant as it has
bloody. The embattled President has appeared consistently determined to foil
any attempt at a brokered political solution, refusing dialogue with opposition
representatives deemed “puppets of the West”, while the armed forces seem
committed to fighting themselves and the country, into the ground. Despite
admissions that the army was overstretched and casualties escalating, Syrian
Defence Minister issued a statement on national TV earlier this month in which
he reiterated that the regime would yet prove to the world that it had “a
strong army, a trained army, an army that cannot be broken."

It is in the context of national disintegration, fuelled by the miscellany of
regional fingers-in-the-pie, al-Qaeda influence and growing threats of spill
over, that the question of some heightened form of Western involvement in the
long-term becomes one of how and when, rather than if. From its outset, the
Syrian uprising was autonomous, expressly opposing any notion of Western
military involvement. However, the escalation of the crisis has seen debates
erupt over foreign intervention and No Fly Zones, driving a wedge amongst many
in the Syrian opposition and its liberal supporters, while perpetuating the
delusion that such action was either imminent or desired by Western
governments.

Western military intervention (ala Libya ) has never been on the cards for
Syria. Disputes over this chimera have served only to legitimate regime
propaganda, and detract from the urgency of forging calls for more realistic,
practical and political measures.

“Direct military intervention is just a red herring because it is not going to
happen, and never was,” says British-Syrian author Robin Yassin-Kassab. “Assad
likes people talking about it because it distracts from main issue, which is
what the regime is doing. The opposition-in-exile put all their eggs in this
basket, leftists were violently opposed to it, the regime was paranoid about it
and everyone kept talking about foreign intervention as the great evil or the
solution to all their problems, while all along it was a fiction.”

Along with elements of the opposition, Yassin-Kassab has advocated
Western governments arming moderate Syrian rebels on the ground to counter both
regime violence and sectarian militia groups. Such a call is perceived by many,
particularly on the anti-imperial left, as controversial, but Yassin-Kassab
believes it may ultimately be the best way of preserving the autonomy and unity
of the crippled uprising.

“Because of the absence of weaponry on the part of the opposition, some
extremist groups are becoming increasing relevant, mostly for practical rather
than ideological reasons,” he says. “These groups have access to their own
sources and because fanatics are fantastic fighters, people see them winning.
They are capturing bases and they can offer a gun, so Syrians are joining up.”

However, as both Yassin-Kassab and Ziadeh note, more consistent and
co-ordinated funding of the organised opposition by Western governments,
instead of the current modus operandi of clandestine arming of select factions,
would enable more cohesive and effective action by moderate opposition groups.

“The West is just going in and choosing their own people, which has taken away
Syrian independence and hasn't worked militarily,” says Yassin-Kassab. “If the
Syrian Coalition is properly funded, with arms channelled through links to
Local Co-ordinations Committees, they could compete for hearts and minds with
extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra. Syrians would have a choice about who to
back.”

Such action may be unpalatable to those wishing to resist Western interference
in yet another Arab struggle for political freedom. However, many in the
opposition have recognised that such immediate forms of intervention may be
preferable to risking future, large-scale measures like US drones attacks against
Islamists, or a repetition of the action now taking place in Mali. Proposals
such as these highlight the problematic at the core of questions of Western
involvement in grass-roots, democratic uprisings: where the motives of foreign
governments are inevitably self-interested, if not malign, when and how can
foreign assistance be justified? As was evident in Libya, and now underscored
in Syria, where a crisis point is reached, calling for foreign backing may come
down to a more expedient equation of the lesser-of-evils or an alliance of
convenience. Options which boost the efficacy of what remains of the Syrian
democratic uprising and the integrity of what remains of the nation itself must
be advocated. While realistic descriptors of horror, strife and civil conflict
in the international arena may be well-intended, simultaneously, they must not
be allowed to overshadow our credibility in Syria's political aspirations and
its ability to restore itself.

As Yassin-Kassab explains, “I am not against the use of the term civil war, but
I can understand why a lot of people are offended by it. Once you say civil
war, it sounds like you have two equal sides or some kind of proportionality,
when the vast majority of people dying are being killed by the regime. It shows
a serious lack of imagination if people can't see that there is still an
uprising in Syria, or to expect that revolutions are not protracted and violent
and messy.”

The ability to envisage something beyond short-term interests and the current
conflict in Syria will be crucial for both Western governments and supporters
of Syria if any form of constructive international action is to be
mustered.

Reflecting on the future of the conflict in his country, poet Golan Haji
suggests that “Syrians want Syria to survive”. The apparent senselessness and
infinitude of the calamity currently consuming Syria is evoked in the
concluding lines of one of Haji's recent poems, 'Soldiers', from which he read
in London:

Where everything I write is an
accusation that turns against me and threatens me
Where everyone who reads me kills me and says:
Doesn't this nonsense have an end?

Syrians have shown remarkable fortitude
throughout the country's two-year descent into strife. Whether the country can
be repaired will now rest largely on the equal determination of the
international community to see Syria survive: a belief that the nonsense,
indeed, will have an end.

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